When looking at the Iraq war through a neorealist perspective it is essential to use its 3 main points when assessing such an event firstly how the international system s ordering principle is anarchy This simply means that there is no such thing as a world government Jakobsen With no overarching global authority that provides security and stability in international relations world politics is not formally and hierarchically organized Dibek Secondly it is that states seek security and finally it is a states superior function to secure itself Jakobsen The theory most often associated with Kenneth Waltz 1924 2013 who was an American scholar and political scientist explained that there is no higher authority amongst states to ensure international order He also argued that the anarchic structure of the international system has made into a self help system for states which in essence means that states are seeking power in order to secure themselves In relation to the Iraq war the structure of the international system helps to explain how America was easily able to invade Iraq without any serious consequences Seeing as there is no sovereign to govern interactions between autonomous nation states conflict is therefore more susceptible between states as there is no global sovereign to regulate interactions between these states Waltz Another perspective of the neorealist theory is that states need to secure themselves i e the Security Dilemma From the The security dilemma one of the most well known concepts in the international relations literature reflects the basic logic of offensive realism The essence of the dilemma is that the measures a state takes to increase its own security usually decrease the security of other states Thus it is difficult for a state to increase its own chances of survival without threatening the survival of other states Mearsheimer When looking at the case between the Iraq war and America it was then that a security dilemma had occurred Iraqi leader Sadam Hussein was seen to be in possession of weapons of mass destruction as well as having close ties to the leader of the Taliban who was suspected of carrying out the 9 11 attacks The US had then stated it had no other options but to engage in military combat in order to ensure security for its own state
